TOM THE DANCING BUG: Is "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" a TRUE STORY? (Yes, and you're living it.)

• [Percival Dunwoody]

  I once went back to the mid-19th century, where some British fellow said I was an ape.  I gave him such a throttling, I heard he delayed the publication of some idiotic book on the subject some 20 years.   -Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time-Traveler From 1909

  • [Brainspore]

    Dunwoody, I think it’s time you came clean about the origin of our species. I heard what went down between you and your Great-(x125,000) grandmother, you randy bastard.

  • [nebogipfel]

    You Cad!

• [GuyInMilwaukee]

  The proof that humans were not once apes is that there are apes. Humans were always humans.. just a simpler form as in Michele Bachmann and Sean Hannity. Someone needs to push the evolution button over at Fox.
  As the great Brion Gysin once said; “Man is bad animal”.

  • [Artor]

    Just like you can tell Americans didn’t come from Europe because there are still Europeans. (Insert the nationality of your ancestors here) That makes perfect sense, right?

• [Mujokan]

  And so, life returned to normal, or at least as normal as it gets on this primitive dirtball inhabited by psychotic apes.

• [nemryn]

  Wait, I thought humans were most closely related to chimpanzees, not apes. Am I misinformed? Is my taxonomic knowledge lacking?

  • [Brainspore]

    Frankly, yes. Chimps and humans are both apes.

  • [NelC]

    Chimps are apes, as are gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos.

    • [nemryn]

      Ah, so chimps are a subset of apes. That’s what I was missing. Thanks!

  • [chellberty]

    I was too late to answer this question darn realtime comment update.
    Chimpanzees are “great” apes so are you, orangutans and gorillas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae

    The debate is still ongoing it is between chimps, orangutans and bonobo, I think.

• [ill lich]

  “Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!”– you wouldn’t be saying that if he was preening you and inspecting for parasites, ungrateful Australopithecine.

• [lknope]

  Humans are the third chimpanzee.  (The other 2 being chimp chimps and bonobo chimps.)  Humans are most closely related to bonobo chimps.  And nelc is correct, Apes are Humans, Chimps, Gorillas and Orangatans.

  • [eviladrian]

    And gibbons!  People always forget the gibbon!

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  2 million years ago in Africa climate change causes a drought.  Drought reduces marginal forests inhabited by Australopithecines.  Australopithecines are forced to spend more time on the ground between stands of trees.  Most are eaten by large predators.  A few fleet footed ones survive.  They evolve longer legs, shorter feet and sprinting.  Once freed of arboreal life they have their hands free to care for young born helpless.  Brains can now evolve in complexity since infants are protected while their brains continue to grow after birth.  Big brains + terrestrial environment = homo apes.

  • [Mujokan]

    I believe one explanation is that competing monkeys (close enough) evolved to eat green fruit, forcing us out.

• [B A]

  The simplest definition if I recall correctly, is that apes have no tails, whereas monkeys do.
  IANABiologist

• [jtegnell]

  Look, guys, it’s all about descent.

  Iknope: humans are exactly equally related to chimps and bonobos. All three of us have the same common ancestor, but chimps and bonobos have a more recent common ancestor.

  B A: That’s a poor definition, because that would make Barbary macaques apes.

  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cladistics

• [RobertC]

  jtegnell: Also mandrills, which is so risible it makes me chortle.

• [JoshP]

     i don’t know if the phrase is still used as such, but the ‘great apes’ refer to humans, chimps, gorillas, etc to seperate us from the lesser apes.  Those being lemurs, lorises and the insy cutsy tarsiers.  Thats what they were teaching in intro to physical anthropology when I was in school.
    @rossindetroit that would be an excellent way to start a flame war among physical anthropologists :)

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    Lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers are primates, but they’re not apes.  Gibbons and siamangs are the lesser apes, if I remember correctly.

• [Josh Burns]

  Now that we know we’re Apes… what do we do about it? I have an idea… but I’d be criticized for it… and I can’t stand criticism. I point to Charlton Heston’s love of guns, and I point to his hatred of Apes. That’s all.

• [Nater]

  Gibbons are funky. Which is why I do the Funky Gibbon on a daily basis.

  Couldn’t care less about siamangs thought..

• [Singe]

  If cardinals become popes, why are there still cardinals?

• [Grandma Bates]

  Look at frame 5. The outline of a “long necked” dinosaur is clearly visible. Here we have incontrovertible proof that people co-existed with dinosaurs. I hope this puts an end to the myth of evolution once and for all! That damn dirty ape Darwin should be ashamed of himself….

  • [MadMolecule]

    Nonsense.  That’s the hand and forearm of the human whose head is visible nearby.  

    What this actually proves is that humans killed off all the dinosaurs before this picture was drawn.

• [wizardru]

  It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true.

• [PrivatizeThis]

  When I was a really young kid, I used to imagine what it would be like to be an ape…and then I found out that I had been one all along. It was the greatest day of my six-year-old life. Thanks, public school education.

• [Kevin Street]

   @boingboing-2f73168bf3656f697507752ec592c437:disqus  : Balancing on two legs meant that Charlie and our ancestors needed to develop a wider pelvis. That allowed for babies with bigger heads, and (except in the case of my next door neighbor) bigger brains. It also freed up a lot of neural connections that had previously been used for spacial positioning in three dimensions. When selection pressures later favoured the development of language, the no longer needed branch swinging neurons were co-opted into speech functions. It’s amazing how everything fitted together.

• [Halloween Jack]

  I’m not descended from an ape–I just look like I am because of this meat suit that I wear over my hyperalloy metal endoskeleton. That way, nobody knows I’m a cyborg from the future. I’ve got another suit that makes me look like an asari, it’s pretty sexy.

• [Stefan Jones]

  Any naturally sapient species is going to have animalistic baggage of some sort or another, and get disgusted with itself somewhere along the way. Those with cinema-making powers will no doubt make movies about alternate scenarios.

  • [Gulliver]

    Any naturally sapient species is going to have animalistic baggage of
    some sort or another, and get disgusted with itself somewhere along the
    way.

    I think perhaps the term you were looking for was ‘atavistic’ baggage. We are still entirely animals.